Bring in Da Funk!

Because rain and damp release odors embedded in the clothing, skin and hair of our patrons, there has been a lot of airborne funk at the library. By funk I do not mean the awesome power of a fully operational mothership, but smells that would trigger even Linda Lovelace’s gag reflex. The other day while I was poring through my indispensible field guide for working in the library, the DSM IV, I found a fascinating disorder called Taijin Kyofusho I discovered it in the body dysmorphic section, which reports that it seems be a peculiarly Japanese cultural phenomenon. People who suffer from it are incapacitated by a paranoia that their body odor is offensive to others. Maybe the disorder will catch on here, sort of the way that manga has. I would like to infect certain patrons with it, in any case.

I've been preoccupied by smells even more so than usual lately because of a wonderful book that I'm reading called Jacobson's Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell. The author, Lyall Watson, focuses on the different attitudes existing on smells among cultures, which may even have a biological root. Although bathing and cleanliness are their national obsession, the Japanese have far fewer sweat glands than Europeans and emit much less body odor. In fact, 90 percent of Japanese have no detectable underarm odor because they have almost no sweat glands there. Men there can even be disqualified from military service for emitting underarm odor. Japanese noses are sensitive - they complain of Europeans having bata kusai, or ‘butter stink,’ an odor that Europeans emit from eating dairy. Japanese can detect it and find the odor extrememly distasteful.

The French, not known for their bathing or arm pit shaving habits, seem to go the other way - they believe their underarm odor is alluring and that is has an aphrodisiacal effect. French men call their underarms ‘spice boxes.’ A French novelist describing his femme fatale character wrote, “The scent of her underarms easily uncaged the animal in men.” They're not comletely off base: underarm sweat contains all sorts of sex pheromones, powerful signals that cause profound changes in peoples that smell them. After dances, girls in rural Austria give their beaux apple slices that they had placed under their arms while dancing to increase their desire for them.

Watson describes how smells act as telegrams, powerful messengers that can influence behavior, attitude and emotion in plants and animals, including humans, even though our sense of smell is practically vestigial compared to most creatures. Smells’ influence on our behavior is often subversive because much of it is unconscious and unexpected. A highly recommended book.